The Truck
2024 · 13m · USA
Directed by Liz Rao
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, thriller
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
A Chinese-American teenager and her boyfriend attempt to purchase the morning-after pill in a small post-Roe American town where reproductive rights are quietly contested.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The Truck situates itself in the lineage of American social realist filmmaking — Rao's restraint marks her as a filmmaker who understands dread accrues through withholding, not spectacle.
Post-Roe ambient dread with Joan Chen and Spike Lee EPing — fine, but the Eliza Hittman comparison invites a direct comparison the film can't actually win. Worthy subject, derivative grammar.
Spike Lee and Joan Chen as exec producers — and building post-Roe horror through stillness and ambient radio rather than incident. That restraint is what makes the political subject hit; the production heft suggests it lands.
Reviews
Liz Rao's The Truck is an urgent, gripping look at teen love and the freedom to choose in this America right now.
Festivals
- Telluride Film Festival 2024
- Hamptons International Film Festival 2024, University Short Film Award